testify that Berhe wasn't Mered. Days
later, Ferrara, Scalia, and Camilleri wrote
a letter to the prefecture, instructing its
o cers to report back on whom Calan-
tropo talked to. Calantropo, after hear-
ing that the Eritreans had been moved
to another camp, decided not to go.
"It's not legal for them to monitor the
defense lawyer," Calantropo said. "But if
you observe his witnesses then you ob-
serve the lawyer."Calantropo is calm and
patient, but, like many Sicilians, he has
become so cynical about institutional
corruption and dubious judicial practices
that he is sometimes inclined to read
conspiracy into what may be coincidence.
"I can't be sure that they are investigat-
ing me," he told me, raising an eyebrow
and tilting his head in a cartoonish per-
formance of skepticism. "But, I have to
tell you, they're not exactly leaving me
alone to do my job."
Last summer, Meron Estefanos
brought Yonas and another Eritrean ref-
ugee, named Ambes, from Sweden to
Palermo. Both men had lived in Mered's
connection house in Tripoli in . After
they gave witness statements to Calan-
tropo, saying that they had been smug-
gled by Mered and had never seen the
man who was on trial, Tondo contacted
Scalia and Ferrara. "I was begging them
to meet our sources," Tondo recalled.
"But they told us, 'We already got Mered.
He's in jail.' " (Estefanos, Calantropo,
Yonas, and Ambes remember Tondo's
calls; Ferrara says that they didn't happen.)
Although Mered is reputed to have
sent more than thirteen thousand Er-
itreans to Italy, the prosecutors seem to
have made no real e ort to speak with
any of his clients. The Glauco investi-
gations and prosecutions were carried
out almost entirely by wiretapping calls,
which allowed o cials to build a web of
remote contacts but provided almost no
context or details about the suspects'
lives---especially the face-to-face trans-
actions that largely make up the smug-
gling business. As a result, Ali, Mered's
Libyan boss, is hardly mentioned in the
Glauco documents. When asked about
him, Ferrara said that he didn't know who
he was. Ambes showed me a photograph
that he had taken of Ali on his phone.
After Yonas and Ambes returned to
Sweden, the Palermo magistrate asked
police to look into them. E.U. law re-
quires that asylum claims be processed
in the first country of entry, but after dis-
embarking in Sicily both men had con-
tinued north, to Sweden, before giving
their fingerprints and their names to the
authorities. Investigating them had the
e ect of scaring o other Eritreans who
might have come forward. "I don't be-
lieve that they are out there to get the
truth," Estefanos said, of the Italian pros-
ecutors. "They would rather prosecute
an innocent person than admit that they
were wrong."
Calantropo submitted into evidence
Berhe's baptism certificate, which he re-
ceived from his family; photos of Berhe
as a child; Berhe's secondary-school re-
port card; Berhe's exam registration in
seven subjects, with an attached photo-
graph; and a scan of Berhe's govern-
ment-issued I.D. card. Berhe's family
members also submitted documents ver-
ifying their own identities.
Other documents established Berhe's
whereabouts. His graduation bulletin
shows that in , while Mered was
smuggling migrants through Sinai, he
was completing his studies at a vocational
school in Eritrea. An o cial form from
the Ministry of Health says that in early
---while Mered was known to be in
Libya---Berhe was treated for an injury
he sustained in a "machine accident,"
while working as a carpenter.The owner
of Thomas Gezae Dairy Farming, in As-
mara, wrote a letter attesting that, from
May, , until November, ---when
Mered was running the connection house
in Tripoli---Berhe was a manager of sales
and distribution. Gezae wrote, "Our com-
pany wishes him good luck in his future
endeavors."
Last fall, one of Berhe's sisters trav-
elled to the prison from Norway, where
she has asylum, to visit him and intro-
duce him to her newborn son. But she
was denied entry. Only family members
can visit inmates, and although her last
name is also Berhe, the prison had him
registered as Medhanie Yehdego Mered.
Last December, the government of
Eritrea sent a letter to Calantropo, con-
firming that the man in custody was
Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe. "It's very
strange that the European police never
asked the Eritrean government for the
identity card of Medhanie Yehdego
Mered," Calantropo said. (Ferrara said
that Italy did not have a legal-assistance
treaty with Eritrea.) When I asked Calan-
tropo why he didn't do that himself, he
replied, "I represent Berhe. I can only
ask on behalf of my client."
The prosecution has not produced a
single witness who claims that Berhe is
Mered. Instead, Ferrara has tried to prove
that Mered uses numerous aliases, one
of which may be Berhe.
A few years ago, Ferrara turned a low-
level Eritrean smuggler named Nuredine
Atta into a state witness. After he agreed
to testify, "we put him under protection,
exactly like Mafia cases," and reduced his
sentence by half, Ferrara said. Long be-
fore Berhe's arrest, Atta was shown the
photograph of Medhanie Yehdego Mered
wearing a cross. He said that he recalled
seeing the man on a beach in Sicily in ,
and that someone had told him that the
man's name was Habtega Ashgedom. In
court, he couldn't keep his story straight.
In a separate smuggling investigation,
prosecutors in Rome discounted Atta's
testimony about Mered as unreliable.
After the extradition, Atta was shown
a photo of Berhe. "I don't recognize
him," he said. Later, on the witness stand,
he testified that he was pretty sure he'd
seen a photo of Berhe at a wedding in
Khartoum, in ---contradicting Ber-
he's claim that he had been selling milk
in Asmara at the time. Berhe's family,
however, produced a marriage certifi-
cate and photographs, proving that the
wedding had been in , in keeping
with the time line that Berhe had laid
out. In court, Ferrara treated the fact
that Atta didn't know Mered or Berhe
as a reason to believe that they might
be the same person.
Ferrara is also trying to link Berhe's
voice to wiretaps of Mered. The prose-
cution had Berhe read phrases transcribed
from Mered's calls, which they asked a
forensic technician named Marco Zo-
naro to compare with the voice from the
calls. Zonaro used software called Nu-
ance Forensics . . But, because it didn't
have settings for Tigrinya, he carried out
54
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 31, 2017